Inner Connected: Letting Go of Control in the Creative Process

When I woke up this morning I planned to write about a painting called Transcendence.

It felt like a turning point for me. The first abstract painting that truly felt like I was moving in the direction I had been searching for.

But much in the way I got carried away from the Love Looks Like series by a painting called Inner Connected, this post seems to be doing the same thing.

I guess that tells me something about how important that painting really is.

At the time I painted Inner Connected I thought it was just another step in the journey. Now I’m starting to realize it may represent something bigger.

Not just a painting.

But a way of understanding my work.

Inner Connected was an abstract painting that grew out of my exploration of love, human connection, and the way ideas evolve through the creative process. At the time I didn’t fully understand what the painting represented, but looking back I realize it captured something important about how my work develops as an artist.

This morning I was supposed to be working on a rice farm. Instead I’m sitting at home waiting for the weather to clear.

It’s a strange feeling just going with the flow.

That has never been something I’ve been very good at. I like plans. I like direction. I like knowing what is going to happen.

You’re a little like that too.

If I’m honest it used to frustrate me because I didn’t want you to end up like me.

But the truth is you can’t plan everything. Life proves that again and again.

So maybe the better approach is to stop fighting it.

Most advice in life is about planning carefully and preparing for when those plans fall apart.

But change is inevitable.

The real reason we resist it is simple.

Insecurity.

We like knowing what is coming next. The unknown scares us.

But if you study creativity you start to see something interesting.

Creativity asks us to follow strange ideas just to see where they lead. To step into uncertainty without knowing if the time spent will lead anywhere at all.

Earlier this year when I committed myself to following my art wherever it wanted to go, I think what I was really doing was embracing risk.

I was tired of planning everything.

I wanted to see what would happen if I simply let go.

And something surprising happened.

My mind exploded with ideas.

Every painting seemed to give birth to ten more.

I couldn’t keep up.

I had originally planned to work in carefully organized series, but that plan fell apart almost immediately.

Instead I found myself working in a kind of whirlwind.

Paint something. Let it go. Move to the next question.

But something else started happening too.

Old ideas began resurfacing.

Past work began reconnecting itself to the present.

City paintings were suddenly appearing as backgrounds in portraits. My confessional paintings were influencing new word portrait ideas. The abstract oil paintings completely changed how I approached portraiture.

Everything started weaving together.

And that’s when Inner Connected started to make more sense to me.

Maybe that painting was not just about people being connected.

Maybe it was about my work being connected.

A Body of Work vs Following Ideas

Galleries often look for artists with a clearly defined body of work. Something that can be easily understood, categorized, and presented to the public.

They like plans. They like neat packages.

An artist like me can be harder to place.

I move between ideas, mediums, and styles. One year I might be painting portraits made from song lyrics. Another year I might be exploring abstraction, symbolism, or philosophy through landscapes and figures.

I don’t really fit a genre anymore. I don’t even fit a medium.

I’m all of the things.

From the outside that might look chaotic.

But the more distance I get from my work, the more I realize it isn’t chaos at all.

It’s connected.

All the experiments, all the detours, all the strange ideas I’ve chased over the years are part of the same larger conversation.

And I think people understand that more than galleries sometimes do.

Because life itself is messy.

It’s unpredictable and strange and constantly changing.

When people see an artist willing to embrace that chaos instead of hiding from it, something clicks.

They recognize themselves in it.

There is no straight path through life.

You adapt. You wander. You experiment.

And if you’re lucky, somewhere along that winding path you leave behind something that helps someone else see their own journey a little more clearly.

And with time you begin to see that none of the work was ever separate. Each series grows larger than the one before it, connecting to the next until the whole body of work begins to reveal itself.

What once looked like scattered ideas slowly becomes something else entirely. A body of work that could only exist because you allowed yourself to follow the questions wherever they led.

For years I worried that if I stepped away from an idea I might lose it.

But the Love Knots prove that isn’t true.

Those drawings lived quietly in the background of my mind for almost thirty years before returning.

Ideas do not disappear.

They wait.

They mature.

They connect themselves to new experiences.

When I look at my work now from a distance I realize I have always been exploring the same questions.

People.

Love.

Humanity.

Our place in the world.

The big questions.

I’ve just been asking them in different ways over time.

That realization has changed how I see my work.

Instead of thinking about everything as separate projects or series, I’m starting to think about it as something larger.

Something inner connected.

All the experiments, the failures, the strange detours and abandoned ideas.

They all belong to the same journey.

And that’s why I leave these notes behind.

So you can see that the creative path is messy.

Confusing.

Sometimes frustrating.

But none of it is wasted.

Failure doesn’t really exist unless you give up.

Everything you try becomes part of the artist you eventually become.

And right now, standing here in the middle of all of it, I can honestly say this is the most exciting place I have ever been in my work.